Even in the best year, less than 60% of eligible voters vote in the US. And that's on cycle. In off-cycle years, it goes down to about 40%. In my state, we vote for governor in off-years. Planned. Anyway, if someone wins the presidency with 52% of the vote, and only 55% of eligible voters actually vote, the "mandate" is attributable to 28.6% of voters.

In the 2008 presidential election the income profile of voters looked like this:

The rate for poorer folks is almost half of what it is for richer folks. No skin in the game, I'd bet that people like Romney would say. What-the-hell's-the-difference is probably a more accurate reason.

Why oh why oh why are "welfare system" and "socialism" always mixed together as if they were the same thing. "Welfare" is a consequence of the inequitable distribution of wealth that is an inevitable product of capitalism. Why inevitable? Paul Solomon had a bit on the PBS Newshour a couple of days ago in which he interviewed this guy Piketty, whose book on Capital is so hot nowadays. They pointed out that capitalist return on investment rises on a historic average of between 4 and 5%, whereas historically, income rises at a rate of around .1%. The math is easy to do, and the curve of divergence between profit/return on investment and income is what we're seeing reflected for the last decade or two. The much less sharp difference between profit and income of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s was the leftover from WWII.

Back to "welfare." Public help for the indigent has been around at least since the Elizabethan Poor Laws of the 16th century. Not that 16th century England was a capitalist country--the dying gasp of feudalism is not the same as capitalism. But feudalism shares with capitalism the notion that wealth must be unequally distributed. "Welfare" is a recognition that in any economic system where that is the case, unless you want to see people dying of starvation on the streets, you need to provide some minimal help to the poor.

Socialism is the public ownership of the means of production in a demand economy. Ideally that means that the point of production is not solely and exclusively the profit motive, but rather the public good. As an instance of the point: there's a small town near where I live where the TV cable system is publicly owned, by the town itself. The cost of cable in that town is a heck of a lot lower than it is for me, who have to deal with Comcast's profit motive. It's not that the company does not produce a surplus, but rather that the surplus is targeted to improving the system, not to lining the pockets of private owners.

I have no doubt that there's need for "welfare" in a socialist system. Some people just fall between the cracks, and need assistance. I certainly don't begrudge them that help. But causing disparities systematically is not the purpose of socialism. It is the purpose of capitalism

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